Ed. note: I have been off in the mountains in pursuit of fish – but I got a chance to check in. I’ll be sending pictures of the fishing adventures soon – now that the power is back on. If you enjoy this post, please consider receiving Almost Fit in your inbox. Thanks.

As I have mentioned in several places, (IowaAvenue,for one), on Thursday of last week I left my corporate day job in favor of pursuing personal projects, not the least of which is Almost Fit. As crazy as this may be, I have neither a specific plan nor another job lined up, but I do have a little bit of savings and a bunch of ideas.

Sounds like a recipe for World Domination if I ever heard one.

So rather than spending the days and evenings freaking out, I decided to execute the first step in my loosely gathered plan for world dominance: Go Fishing.

Fly fishing on the North Umpqua river in the mountains of Southern Oregon to be exact. My brother-in-law owns a beautiful campground and RV park on the North Umpqua called Umpqua’s Last Resort. The campground has hot showers and power to every camp spot, as well as two new furnished cabins. We have converged with my wife’s family for a week of camping, playing, and familial merriment, which is a fancy way of saying beer by the river with the cousins.

My first order of business (or so I thought) was to get a wireless Internet connection working. After an hour or so of plunking around with settings on their equipment, the wireless router was up and running, and the range was surprisingly far-reaching

This convenience was short-lived.

Later that evening we had a spectacular thunder and lightning storm which included most of us campers outside cheering on the light show as if it were being presented by the park owners. When the storm picked up (and the rain started), we moved under cover, but the display was exhilerating. Unfortunately, lightning strikes brought several trees down over power lines. No power means no Web connection, which meant Almost Fit would have to wait. The power remained out into the following evening, came back on for overnight for a while, but by the next morning the power was out again.

But all things considered, AC power is a minor inconvenience when your long term goals are to rule the world, or other similar grandiose aspirations.

S’more, anyone?

As you might imagine, on the eating track things have been a little looser since we’re camping. At home, I’ve primarily given up drinking beer in my daily routine, but that rule has been enthusiastically suspended here. I am also eating more meat than I typically do, and very few vegetables unfortunately, although the truth is I feel like I’m eating less over all because it is so hot here. Ah, the vagabond life.

On the plus side, exercise has been in full swing – there are numerous rivers and creeks that flow all over the mountains here, and we’ve been busy swimming, skipping rocks (I’m sure there must be a few calories burned there), and jumping from outcroppings into frigid waters below. I’ve also continued to pursue my 100 push-up challenge goals, as well as daily crunches.

In the next few days I’ll be publishing more on my fly fishing experience here, and many points between, so stay tuned.

Oh, and one more thing:

So what’s all this talk of World Domination? Now that the power has returned, I want to share with Almost Fit readers a little something that is impacting my thought processes over the last couple of weeks. But you’ll have to wait until the next post to see what I mean. Don’t worry – it’s not Amway or some cult – it is simply that I have bumped up against a kindred spirit online, and knowing that others exist with a similar goal in life has really thrown me into an entirely new and positive path.

It seems that quitting my job was very clearly a good idea. At least that is what I’m telling myself.

More to come……

Bookmark It

Ed. note: Here’s a little exercise story about a young man named Metroknow. Why his parents chose that name is beyond anyone’s recollection, but that’s not really integral to the story.

When I watch my soon-to-be four year old, like millions of parents before me I marvel at his sheer level of energy. He plays hard, laughs hard, cries hard, and sleeps hard. In my case I seem to have replaced all of those items with “work” hard. But, I’m getting back to playing a little too.

I grew up playing just about every sport I could get into, though rarely in an organized league. While I went through long periods of constant football, soccer, basketball, and some baseball, I really excelled at competitive volleyball into adulthood. As an adult, my somewhat regular exercise was either biking, running, or pickup games of basketball on weekends.

I was also an avid skateboarder from my early teens to my late twenties, and I have the knees to prove it. Throw in some skiing and snowboarding, and you have several years worth of the orthopaedic surgeon’s yacht payment.

At some point I got out of the habit of finding fun ways to exercise, and life times laziness plus a love of food equals about 5-10 lbs a year gained, multiplied by 7 years. Not pretty.

Why I hated running…for a while

In my thirties, realizing what was happening, I started getting back into running, or so I thought. When I was younger, distance running was much easier (to which I hear a collective, “DUH” arising…). But in my thirties, things like my knees started to make odd creaking and popping noises, my lungs seemed to have atrophied, and my ankles were prone to give out from time to time. What was happening to me? Was I being poisoned?

When it came to running, things were particularly frustrating. I was constantly trying to improve my time on my little course around the neighborhood, hoping for weight loss results. While I found it was beneficial mentally to get out, I saw absolutely ZERO results in weight loss. Why?

Looking back, there were obviously two parts of the problem:
1. I hadn’t changed my eating habits
2. I wasn’t doing it enough

I know it sounds simple, but the truth is when it came to exercise I was doing just enough….to hate it. I was running for only about 30 minutes or so, including warm-up and cool-down time. I was getting my heart rate up for what I considered long periods within that 30 minutes – but realistically? That was probably a sustained heart rate of 85% for about 7 minutes or so.

That is not going to yield a climber’s physique any time soon.

When I returned from my “run” (which I say with that ultra-annoying two-fingered “quotes” gesture), I was completely out of breath, convinced that I was exhausted, and ready to sit down and eat something good because I had earned it.

Let me just pause and say this: If you are not seeing a stadium full of little red flags waiving like a television pan shot at the coming Olympic games, then I think you may have a lot in common with me way back when.

So what changed? In short, I decided to participate in a charity training event to run a 1/2 marathon. To be frank, while I really was supportive of the cause (and I did raise my $2000 pledge), what I really wanted was some guidance on what I was doing wrong. And it worked. I was introduced to the walk/run technique, which ultimately allowed me to run 13.1 miles without dying. Though I felt like it was a close call by the end.

Do you have something you’d like to share with the class?

Basically I learned that a) If you don’t exercise enough, you won’t see results for many months, if at all and you will HATE it, and b) Injury is the enemy, so take it slow. That is what I did; even at 75 lbs overweight, I was able to complete the 1/2 marathon. Of course, my knees resented me and reminded me of my lack of consideration to them for many months after, but they seem to be a little more agreeable now.

All of that taught me half of the equation: If I want to see real fitness results, I need to exercise for longer than one half hour three times a week. While there may be some intensive programs out there that advocate abs and hind-quarters like titanium in 5 minutes or less, that is really not what I’m interested in. Wait. That came out wrong. What I mean is, my fitness goals are simply to improve my health, not to be the butt stand-in for Brad Pitt.

In the mean time, I am gaining mastery of the second half of the equation: My diet. Eating real food in moderation really does work. 26 lbs lost so far this year. The problem is, while I do feel better, and the weight is slowly coming off, I do not feel strong. I am not sleeping as well as I would like (a lifelong problem), and things jiggle when I walk that I would like to make stop.

That, and each day that goes by, my son is getting faster. I can’t let him beat me just yet – I have to have a LITTLE dignity, don’t I?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider having Almost Fit delivered to your email’s ever-crowded inbox. Thanks.

Bookmark It

I’ve had a bit of an accident.

Somehow, I have stumbled into an exercise routine. It’s like a tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and fell into a state-of-the-art elliptical training machine. I would like to say that I’m exercising because my tremendous force of will has caused me to make changes for the better, but the truth is that it has kind of just happened.

There could be worse things.

I’ve also started annoying the muscles in my arms, catching them completely by surprise (you’ll find out how at the end of this post – but in case you didn’t notice, the picture might be a gigantic clue).

As regular readers of Almost Fit know, I spend an awful lot of time talking about how I want to exercise regularly. I have posted numerous questions on sites all over the place asking for methods of finding inspiration to get out the door, and for quite some time I would feel enthused for the evening, but for some reason I wasn’t making it out the door the next morning.

Eating my own Dog Food

In software (and many other industries, actually) we have this concept of “eating your own dog food”, or various politically incorrect flavors (pun intended) of that idea. Essentially it means that you use the things you create. Pretty soon you hate the broken bits so much that you feel absolutely compelled to fix the dang thing (unless you work for the Microsoft Office team – in that case you just assume it is a character flaw of everyone who doesn’t like the way it works, and return to your insular pedantic bubble).

In my recent article on 20 ways to kill the fast food habit (which had 375,000 page views on Fox News BTW!), the first tip was very simple: Start small. So small, in fact, that it is impossible to fail. Well apparently I need to start reading what I’m writing (or eating that dog food), because that little technique had eluded me for the one thing I know I need to do more than anything else right now – Exercise.

That appears to have changed.

My exercise routine, or, “Slowly he turned…step by step…”

While I wasn’t paying attention, it seems that I have started walking regularly – not for the fitness mind you, but with the goal of mental clarity. I am in a big transition right now with moving away from my day job to pursue online projects like Almost Fit, and I know that exercise has to be part of that picture. In the past, exercise has always opened my view of things in unexpected ways, and I need that right now.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been walking every other morning, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer. My longest walk was 5 miles on a busy two-lane country road near our house that made me sense that for the love of my wife, kids, and all things sacred I ought to find a different route.

[RANT WARNING: At the risk of offending a few readers...A little sidenote to Oregon drivers? Despite your much publicized pride in your driving ability, everywhere else in the country, it is common courtesy to move over just a tad when you see a 250 lb. father of two walking on the shoulder of the road (with the exception of Texas, where I don't think it is required to move over for anything, unless you're actually trying to hit it (D'oh - there goes my Texas readership...)). In my entire walk, not a single Oregon driver even so much as moved a foot over to give me a little breathing room. Think of it this way: you do NOT want to run into a 250 lb. sack of anything, much less a disgruntled unemployed writer (oxymoron?). All you gain is a HUGE horseshoe-shaped dent in your front end, and an earful of whining from an annoyingly witty chatterbox. </RANT>]

Now I know that this is still in the “not quite enough” realm, but it is a start. I think the key is I’m viewing it as just the beginning of reaching for bigger goals. Rather than being in a big hurry to run a marathon, I’m starting small, and hoping to build on those successes.

I must be doing something right

In the midst of writing this post, along came this article in my inbox this morning:

How To Go From Sedentary to Running in 5 easy steps

This is yet another exceptional piece from Leo at ZenHabits.net, who is off this week enjoying a second honeymoon with his wife. The great thing? I am exactly in the middle of step 1, and I didn’t even know it until I read this post. This gives me a roadmap to follow, and that is what I intend to do.

The other thing that has happened with exercise is J.D. at Get Fit Slowly has started a revolution of sorts – the 100 Push-up Challenge, which has folks coming out of the woodwork to give it a shot. I’ve started this week as well, so we’ll see how things turn out. If you want to know more about the challenge, definitely check out the 100 push-ups site.

My arms are already irritated with me, but I’m ignoring them. It’s tough love.

–

If you enjoyed this article, please consider receiving Almost Fit in your inbox, or sharing this article with your favorite social media tool. I like Digg and StumbleUpon, personally. Thanks.

Bookmark It